Sudan Radio

Sudan Radio, historically known as Radio Omdurman for its iconic opening line “Huna Omdurman” (“This is Omdurman”), is Sudan’s principal state-owned radio broadcaster and one of the oldest media institutions in the country. The service was launched in May 1940 by the British colonial administration during the Second World War, initially broadcasting for 30 minutes a day with war updates from Omdurman; following Sudanese independence in 1956 it was renamed “Sudan Radio.” For more than eight decades it has functioned as a central conduit for disseminating official narratives and government messaging, operating within Sudan’s state radio-television system under the political authority of the Ministry of Culture and Information. Radio Omdurman has also played a major role in Sudanese musical and cultural identity, including via the Radio Omdurman Orchestra (1960s–1995, which went out of business in 1995 under political and religious pressure) and the careers of artists such as Tayeb Abdalla, Sayed Khalifa, and Mohamed Wardi.

Methodological note on jurisdiction

Since 15 April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a devastating civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (President of the Transitional Sovereignty Council) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group under Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo “Hemedti.” The conflict has produced two competing claims to state authority: the internationally recognised Transitional Sovereignty Council government, which returned to Khartoum on 11 January 2026 after SAF battlefield gains in 2025 including the recapture of the Republican Palace in March 2025 and the restoration of army control over much of the capital, and the RSF-aligned Sudan Founding Alliance/TASIS rival administration, which announced a parallel government on 26 July 2025, naming Mohamed Hassan al-Taishi as Prime Minister in Nyala. The African Union rejected recognition of the parallel government on 29 July 2025. Sudan Radio operates from SAF-aligned territory and broadcasts on behalf of the internationally recognised government; no evidence was found that Sudan Radio produces content for the RSF parallel administration.

Media assets

Radio: Sudan Radio

Ownership and governance

Sudan Radio operates within Sudan’s state radio-television system and under the political authority of the Ministry of Culture and Information. The broadcaster operates without an autonomous board, an independent appointment framework, or enforceable editorial-independence safeguards comparable to a public-service model.

The Director General of the General Authority for Radio and Television is Ibrahim Al-Bazai, identified as such in a February 2025 interview with Sudanow Magazine around World Radio Day.

The supervisory ministry has seen significant changes during the war. The Ministry of Culture and Information has been led by Khaled Ali Al-Aiser, a Sudanese journalist and former presenter at Al-Sharqiyya, previously a news editor for the London-based newspaper Al Zaman, since November 2024, when he was appointed by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Chairman of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, succeeding Graham Abdel Qader.

The internationally recognised government has been led by Prime Minister Kamil Idris, who was named by the Transitional Sovereignty Council on 19 May 2025 and sworn in on 31 May 2025. On 11 January 2026, Idris announced from Khartoum that the government had returned to the capital after a nearly three-year relocation to Port Sudan, describing the move as “final and comprehensive” while acknowledging that the Presidential Palace and several ministry buildings remained too damaged for use.

Source of funding and budget

The broadcaster is entirely dependent on government subsidies, with operational funding provided through allocations from the national budget. Sudan Radio does not publish financial statements, and no data on expenditures or budgeting is made available to the public. Updated 2025–26 Sudan Radio budget figures have not been made public, in line with the broadcaster’s long-standing pattern of non-disclosure. The broadcaster’s fiscal operations remain entirely opaque.

The Sudan Radio and Television Corporation holds a major audiovisual archive of radio, video, and film recordings, including newsreels and music. The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate expressed particular concern during the war over the fate of the broadcaster’s archive, described in its public statements as “nearly 100 years old”, which is held at the Omdurman complex.

The civil war has inflicted catastrophic physical damage on Sudan Radio’s infrastructure. Sudan Radio shares the Al-Mulazmeen complex in Omdurman with Sudan TV. On 15 April 2023, the complex was attacked by RSF forces at the start of the war and was held by RSF for approximately 11 months, during which, according to Wall Street Journal survivor testimony and Sudanese Journalists Syndicate reporting, the building was reportedly used as a detention site, with one former detainee describing imprisonment and torture inside the radio station and more than 100 prisoners reportedly held there. On 12 March 2024, SAF forces announced the recapture of the National Radio and Television Corporation headquarters following heavy fighting in Omdurman. The Ministry of Information subsequently cited “extensive fire damage to the radio buildings, destruction of television studios, and the complete loss of new external broadcasting equipment” from theft or fire.

Independent monitoring reports cited by eMM Media Monitoring estimate that approximately 90% of media facilities in Khartoum, including TV and radio infrastructure, were destroyed during the war’s early phases, affecting both state and private media. The broadcaster has not publicly disclosed the extent to which its pre-war broadcast capacity has been restored.

Editorial independence

Sudan Radio functions as part of the state communication system, with wartime output aligned with SAF-aligned government narratives. The broadcaster operates without enforceable editorial-independence safeguards, an independent oversight body, or programme-level monitoring mechanisms comparable to a public-service model. In the absence of statutory safeguards or watchdog bodies, journalistic autonomy at Sudan Radio is effectively absent.

Under SAF control since the March 2024 recapture, Sudan Radio has continued to operate as an official audio outlet for the army-led government, amplifying coverage of military gains, including the 21 March 2025 SAF recapture of the Republican Palace, the restoration of army control over much of the capital through 2025, and the 11 January 2026 return of the government to Khartoum.

The 2023–2026 civil-war environment has produced one of the most catastrophic press-freedom landscapes in the world. Press-freedom monitors and Sudanese journalist organisations report different figures depending on the source, and these should not be merged into a single dataset: Reporters Without Borders ranked Sudan 161st of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, a drop of 5 places from 156/180 in 2025, identifying “recurring armed conflict” as the primary driver.

AI and digital policy

Sudan Radio maintains terrestrial FM and online streaming distribution channels (the latter listed in public radio-directory aggregators). Sudan Radio has not adopted any public policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, or content provenance frameworks such as C2PA. At the national-policy level, the Ministry of Culture and Information’s 8 April 2026 directive on operating licences for all media outlets, and proposed amendments to the 2009 Press and Publications Act under discussion in 2025, illustrate the ministry’s continuing emphasis on licensing and content-control mechanisms rather than on AI disclosure or content-provenance frameworks.

May 2026